Tatyana Golikova at SPIEF 2016: there’s the money in the country, but there are no efficient institutions to manage this money

Tatyana Golikova, Chairman of the Accounts Chamber, spoke at the St. Petersburg international economic forum (SPIEF 2016) as a part of the panel session “Features of the Budget as an Economic Policy Tool”.

Speaking about effectiveness of budget expenditures, Tatyana Golikova has informed that currently the Accounts Chamber conducts an audit of development institutions. According to the head of the control agency, the federal budget in 2008-2015 invested 4.1 trillion rubles and 6 trillion rubles as direct budgetary investments in the classical development institutions. “Let’s see what happened to this money. First of all, oddly enough, but during the crisis years, despite all state support, efficiency of direct investments fell. Quality of the targeted investment program with the direct budget investments, worsened, its enforceability deteriorated dramatically. It should seem, here’s support, here’s money, so, let’s work, but no, we see an almost 5% drop in performance between 2009 and 2015: the facilities scheduled to be commissioned are only 50% commissioned ", -Tatiana Golikova said.

The head of the control agency added that along with the deterioration in the performance of the Federal targeted investment program in 2008-2015, there had been a growth of the scope of federal budget receivables, i.e. disbursements that had been allocated were not used by contracting organizations. “Practically, we granted credits to contractors. As a rule, the contractors deposited this money. They do not want to withdraw money from those deposits. But the there is always the question: and how effective are those investments in the deposits of our own money? “I can tell you how much it is as of January 1, 2016 - it is 3.3 trillion rubles”, - Tatiana Golikova stated. “Development institutes have created or are creating a non-competitive market, non-competitive procurement in this country. And we, making surrender of our principles, strategic goals we set ourself - establishing competitive economics - go to non-competitive economics”, - the head of the Accounts Chamber resumed.

Also Tatyana Golikova expressed her opinion as to the statement made during the panel session related to increase in Russian government debt. “I am not a supporter of increase in government debt. Just from the perspective of my current position and the position of understanding the problem, I would like to say that there’s the money in the country, but there are no effective institutions to manage this money ", - she said.

Further, it follows from the words of the Chairman of the Accounts Chamber, that she is not a supporter of reducing the federal budget social expenditures. “If we do not deal with the quality of life of our citizens and do not support them at a certain level, then we’ll get a fundamental negative result.” We will be forced to invest even more than we invest now, because any rate, let's say, the death rate, birth rate, is determined by the quality of life and predetermined by that investment in human capital which is provided by us today ", - Tatiana Golikova said.